Simulation modeling and analysis of the outpatient clinic of the college of medicine and public health, Ubon Ratchathani university

Abstract

The outpatient clinic of the primary care unit of the College of Medicine and Public Health, Ubon Ratchathani University, which was recently founded, has been under need to prepare its operations to be able to accommodate the anticipated increase in the number of patients in the near future while maintaining its quality of services. In this research, the operation of the outpatient clinic is modeled using discrete-event simulation. The goal of this research is to quantitatively evaluate the workload of staffs in the system. Preliminary resource allocation and leveling approaches are modeled and analyzed to predict the outcome of their practical implementation. In addition, bottleneck analysis is performed in this research. The studying results indicate that the level of workload of physicians, nurses and other staffs varies greatly across departments. Diagnosis department is identified as the potential bottleneck of the system. The findings in this research are expected to provide management with a better understanding of resource utilization and overall workload characteristics of the system under study.